Better Pay and Benefits

There is something fundamentally wrong with our economy. The rich keep getting richer while working people are working longer hours just to make ends meet. Despite year after year of increased productivity, we are not sharing in the fruits of our labor.

The labor movement has advocated always for policies that promote a full-employment economy at wages high enough to allow working people to support their families. We work to combat policies that erode the rights of working people, and we work to make sure the wealth-generating labor of working people is rewarded justly. To achieve this, we support a broad range of policies, including restoring the minimum wage to a living wage, pay equity for women and people of color, restoring overtime protections, prevailing wage standards, and putting an end to wage theft and the rampant misclassification of employees as independent contractors.

When working people join together in unions to bargain for better wages and benefits, we help create a more just, prosperous and equitable society. Join our Common Sense Economics program.

Zero

The number of states where a minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment working a 40-hour week.

The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90% is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage.”

Robert Reich

Did You Know

The states with the highest percentages of hourly paid workers earning at or below the federal minimum wage were in the South: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia (all were about 6%).